by John Wilcox
The Diamond Frontier
JOHN WILCOX
headline
www.headline.co.uk
Copyright © 2006 John Wilcox
The right of John Wilcox to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010
All characters - other than the obvious historical figures - in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
eISBN : 978 0 7553 8168 5
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Author’s Note
John Wilcox was born in Birmingham and was an award-winning journalist for some years before being lured into industry. In the mid-nineties he sold his company in order to devote himself to his first love, writing. His previous Simon Fonthill novels, THE HORNS OF THE BUFFALO and THE ROAD TO KANDAHAR, were highly acclaimed. He has also published two works of non-fiction, PLAYING ON THE GREEN and MASTERS OF BATTLE.
Praise for John Wilcox’s previous Simon Fonthill novels:
‘Wilcox now has the grand formula and the hope is that more Victorian escapades will flow from his pen’ Oxford Times
‘A lovingly detailed, good old-fashioned adventure yarn’ Choice
‘A well-researched and superbly paced story’ Bolton Evening News
‘Wilcox’s characters are less brash or glamorous, but arguably more realistic and credible than the likes of ever-enjoyable Sharpe. Good escapism and an enjoyable read’ Belfast News Letter
‘What a treat . . . Wilcox has contrived a glorious adventure story’ Western Daily Press
‘If you’re looking for wartime adventure in the tradition of Bernard Cornwell and C. S. Forester and a hero to match Sharpe or Hornblower, then search no more’ Northern Echo
‘A hugely enjoyable rip-roaring read’ Huddersfield Daily Examiner
For my sister Margaret
Acknowledgements
As always, I owe gratitude to the staff of London Library for allowing me to delve, via their shelves, into the minutiae of life in Britain, India and South Africa in 1880; to my agent, Jane Conway-Gordon; and to my meticulous and constructive editor at Headline, Sherise Hobbs, for helping me to put the results on paper.
Research overseas is an expensive but necessary (and fun!) part of the business, and I received an enormous amount of help in South Africa. I wish to thank Mrs K. Dumminy of the Kimberley Africana Library, and Ms Celeste Feder, the de Beers Archivist, for providing me with so much evocative documentation about old Kimberley; Avril Morris, PA to my old friend, publisher Alan Ramsay in Cape Town, for easing the logistical nightmare of covering so many miles in such a short time; and Toyota South Africa, for providing reliable transport which took me in comfort to the remote Mpumalanga/Mozambique border. Once there, I received expert help and splendid company in Sekhukune land from guide Ben Fouche, and Orphrus Ntjana, a member of the bePedi race. Lastly, as ever, my love and thanks go to my wife Betty, who accompanied me on these travels and proof-read with diligence every word I wrote.
For those who would like further reading on the subjects and territories covered in this novel, the following very short bibliography may help: on Bombay, City of Gold by Gillian Tindall (Temple Smith, 1982); on diamonds, The Book of Diamonds by Joan Younger Dickinson (Frederick Muller, 1965); on Old Transvaal, The Veldt in the Seventies, by Sir Charles Warren (Isbister & Co, 1902), and Life of Sir G. Pomery Colley by Sir William F. Butler (John Murray, 1899); on Cecil Rhodes and the early days of Kimberley, Rhodes of Africa by Felix Cross (Cassell, 1956), Cecil Rhodes by John Flint (Hutchinson, 1976), and ‘Rhodes C. J. Last Will and Testament’ (ed. W. T. Stead, 1902, London Review of Reviews); on Wolseley and the Sekukuni campaign, Wolseley by Sir F. Maurice and Sir George Arthur (Heinemann, 1924), and The Colonial Wars Source Book by Philip J. Haythornthwaite (Arms and Armour, 1965).
Many of these books, alas, are now out of print, but the London Library - and almost certainly the British Library - should be able to provide most if not all of them.
J.W.
Chilmark,
August 2004
South East Africa 1880
Chapter 1
Bombay, 1880
The waiter, conspicuous in his white kurta among the soberly suited Parsee merchants conversing at their tables, positioned the glass of whisky and soda precisely in the centre of his silver tray and looked around for his customer. There he was, at the far end of the lounge, sitting alone and slightly cramped on the narrow balcony, partly outside, one boot on the carved wooden rail tilting back his chair, his head turned as he looked fixedly down at Parsi Bazaar Street. He presented a picture of a man completely absorbed by something at the distant end of that teeming thoroughfare and unaware of his immediate surroundings, or, indeed, of the speculation his presence at the hotel was causing.
Picking his way between the tables, the waiter regarded the static figure with curiosity. Europeans were rare residents of this little hotel - if this man was European, that is. His skin was dark, whether from sunburn or ethnic origin was unclear. And that was the point. He didn’t quite seem to fit in, even here in eclectic, expanding Bombay - now vying with Calcutta to be the largest city east of Suez until Tokyo and the largest in the British Empire after London. It was a city full of the wealth of East and West and of the poverty and vice of both, where the hands of the gods Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer were evidenced daily. A breeding ground of millionaires but also of plague. Here in the heart of that city, this cramped, ancient hotel, with its extravagant wooden Gujarat carvings, set in the middle of the Fort away from the white men’s clubs, was accustomed to welcoming ethnic misfits and exotic travellers from the far fringes of the Indian Ocean. In this room, the waiter had seen Mosselmen from Arabia furtively drinking brandy and giant negroes from the African coast talking of gold. He had served suave Persians and, occasionally, an Anglo-Indian bureaucrat entertaining a coy Hindu lady. But this man fitted no pattern.
He wore the crumpled white cotton suit of a Eurasian civil servant, yet his bearing was that of a pukka sahib: erect and with a slim build that made him seem taller than his five foot nine inches. He had been commanding and confident in his requests. Yet he did not bark orders like the English. He spoke softly and politely, though he rarely smiled and his sad eyes were brown, not black like those born of the union of British Tommy and Hindu bazaar girl. The hair was brown, too, although obviously bleached by t
he sun, and it was worn long, not in the harsh, short cut of the Englishman. It was the face, though, which had caused the most speculation among the staff of the hotel. The waiter studied it again as it came into profile as he approached the guest. The broad cheekbones narrowing down to a small but firm jaw were commonplace enough, as was the thin-lipped mouth, although it did perhaps betray a sensitivity unusual in those ruling the Queen Empress’s Raj - if, that is, he was of that class. But the nose had been broken, seemingly quite recently, for it still bore a white scar across the bridge that stood out savagely from the tanned features. The result, however, had not been to spread the nose across the face, but rather to hook it downwards, so that it gave a predatory expression to the visage. He looked, in fact, like a Pathan warrior in a suit, a man of the hills who had descended to the plains. A hunter resting between kills.
‘Whisky soda . . . ah . . . sahib,’ said the waiter, deciding to give his customer the benefit of the doubt and carefully placing the glass on the rattan table.
Simon Fonthill whirled round. ‘Thank you. Oh, no ice?’ To Fonthill, who had been in Bombay only two days, the rare luxury of ice after so many months on the dry plateaus and dusty scree of the Afghan hills had been a revelation and a delight.
‘Sorry, sahib. Bombay ice house is empty. But I have wrapped glass in damp towel.’
‘Very well.’ Fonthill looked away again, along the crowded street below him, and then back to the waiter. ‘Would you do me a service, if you have a moment, that is?’
The waiter inclined his head, flattered at the politeness of the request. ‘Of course, sahib.’
‘Thank you. I am watching for the arrival of someone and I do not wish to leave the balcony. Here is the key to my room. On the table inside - on the right-hand side of the door - there is a small field telescope. Please bring it to me.’
For a moment, the Hindu looked astonished. Would he not rob the room, taking all of the belongings of this strange white man - if, again, he was a white man, that is? Would he not delve beneath his shirts and look for that wallet which, he had been told, was always there? Would he not take his socks and his spare shoes and sell them in the bazaar? He stared into the brown eyes that regarded him with just a trace of amusement.
Fonthill smiled fully now. ‘You are a man to be trusted, of course,’ he said and turned to redirect his gaze up the street.
The waiter bowed and was gone. Simon frowned and concentrated hard as he looked for that familiar face among the crowd stretching away from only twelve feet below him. That thronged street seemed, indeed, like the Biblical river of humanity, as though some giant hand had swept up examples of all the races of the Levant, the Orient and India and sprinkled them down, struggling north and south along Parsi Bazaar Street, two currents surging in random urgency. Arabs and Afridis from the north, all with precariously wound turbans, jostling with red-turbaned Banians and Persians in silken vests; prosperous Jains, in their snowy robes, using their tall staffs to make their way; fakirs, their eyes hollow and hypnotic under their mud-tangled hair, being allowed respectful passage; black-capped Jews hurrying towards another negotiation; and Parsees in gaily painted buggies carving swathes through the slow-moving pedestrians. The horse-driven trams, made in England and introduced to Bombay only ten years before, had not yet reached the crowded canyons of the Fort, but humped oxen, like ponderous islands in the stream, were doggedly pulling their loads, their drivers occasionally slipping down to wipe the muzzles of their beasts to avoid them suffocating from the froth that formed there in the heat.
Simon Fonthill unthinkingly took in the pageant. After the dun greyness of the Hindu Kush mountains, the colour almost hurt his eyes. But his mind did not record it. His brain was dominated by one question: where the hell, where the bloody hell, was Jenkins?
Ex-Sergeant Jenkins, once of the 24th Regiment of Foot and latterly of the Queen’s Own Corps of Guides, Indian Army - ‘352’ Jenkins, always so-called (his Christian name hardly known and never used) because the last three units of his army number were the only means of identifying him from the other nine Jenkinses in the 24th, this most Welsh of regiments - had been away for nearly five hours now. The mission had been simple: gathering poste restante mail from the army collection point and picking up the tickets from the steamship line for their onward passage back home to Britain. Both destinations were only twenty minutes’ walk away from their hotel.
Simon’s brow wrinkled at the thought. Jenkins, the bravest of warriors, the most caring of servants and the warmest of comrades, had two great failings: a penchant for beer and an inability to find his way from A to B, even if the path was marked by flaming beacons. Somewhere out there, amongst the multitudes in this most populous of cities, was Jenkins - lost and probably drunk. It was not that the man could not take care of himself. Although only five foot four inches tall, the Welshman was as broad as a chapel door and hardened by years of adversity and of fighting in barracks and bar rooms and on battlefields around the world. Simon had seen him, unarmed, completely demolish a huge spear-carrying Zulu in single combat. Oh, Jenkins could fight all right! But drink never improved any warrior, and Simon knew that in a city like Bombay this could be dangerous. He was well aware that the cult of Thuggee, practised by the followers of the Hindu goddess Kali, had never been completely eradicated by the British. The Government formally boasted that the campaign of Lord Bentinck back in the thirties had finally crushed the cult. But anyone who spent any time in India knew that it had lingered on in the rural hinterland of the sub-continent, with news of the garrotting of rich farmers and even, occasionally, of white men being reported and, usually, suppressed. Now, it was rumoured, the Thugs were creeping into the new cities, of which Bombay, with its thirty new textile mills and cotton fortunes being created by the month, must be a target. If Thugs were out there somewhere they would see a lone, drunken European as easy prey. They never hunted alone, and even Jenkins, an unsteady, unarmed Jenkins, would be no match for a group of them. Simon squinted against the sun and tried to focus into the distance, his worries now building.
‘Your eyeglass, sahib.’ The waiter was smiling now, with the shared intimacy of a man who had been trusted and had passed the test with glowing colours.
‘Ah, thank you.’ Simon put a handful of coins on the tray and picked up the telescope. He extended it and put it to his eye, looking to the south, the direction from which Jenkins should emerge. But all he could see was a mass of multicoloured turbans, bobbing away into the distance. Disheartened, he swung the glass in the other direction, away from the docks and the Post Office. At first, nothing. Then he stiffened. He focused the lens to gain a clearer definition - and there, heading in his direction, was the man himself: 352 Jenkins, his black hair sticking up like corn stubble in a newly fired field, his huge moustache curving away under his nose, his head atop that short, wide body appearing and disappearing in the middle of the crowd. A Jenkins who was, it could now be seen as he came closer into focus, staggering slightly and, by the look of it, singing. A very happy, drunken Jenkins.
‘Oh lord!’ Simon snapped the telescope shut and took a deep pull at his whisky and soda as he faced the prospect of sobering up the best yet most awkward friend in his life. It was drink which had led the young Jenkins, then a corporal, to hit a colour sergeant of the 24th Foot and spend a year in ‘the Glasshouse’, the new and violent detention centre in Aldershot. Reduced to the ranks on his return to the regiment, he had met Simon in the depot hospital at Brecon, Wales, when Simon was on his sickbed. As batman, it had been the older and barrack-wise Jenkins who had been Simon’s mentor through the long period of the young subaltern’s persecution by his commanding officer, Colonel Ralph Covington, the man who had remained Simon’s enemy ever since. Together Simon and Jenkins had fought through the Zulu War and the Second Afghan War, each saving the other’s life and forging a bond of friendship virtually unique in the class-structured army of Queen Victoria. Now, having left the army, they were homeward bo
und to Simon’s parents’ house in the Welsh borders, where Simon hoped that he could recover from the scars - both physical and spiritual - which he had sustained during those campaigns and where they could decide where next to seek their fortunes. They could, that is, if Jenkins could sober up.
Relaxed now to know that, at least, 352 was almost home, Simon put the glass to his eye again. No doubt about it. Jenkins was drunk right enough. He was happily rolling through the crowd, his mouth opening and closing in what Simon knew would be a completely tuneless rendition of ‘Men of Harlech’ (Jenkins was one of the few Welshmen known to Simon who could not carry a melody). Simon refocused the lens slightly and idly regarded the faces around the little Welshman. No one seemed concerned, unless . . . He sat up and looked again. There were three men in black turbans immediately behind Jenkins, two of whom, as he watched, moved to either side of 352. Each put an arm around him, as though in a friendly, jocular manner, and then, to Simon’s horror, moved him out of sight into a side alley in one smoothly executed movement. The third stayed behind for a moment, smiling and speaking to someone in the crowd, before he too slipped away.
With a crash, Simon sent his side table flying and, with one hand on the wooden rail before him, vaulted unthinkingly into the crowded street below. The fall could have fractured an ankle at least but it was broken by a stout Parsee, whom Simon sent crashing into his companions and then to the ground. ‘Sorry,’ gasped the Englishman and then, shouting, ‘Make way!’ he began to run as best he could through the jostling multitude, thrusting men aside without care.
